Microsoft may be playing its cards too closely to his chest for its Windows 8 Surface Pro slate: there's no word on a UK launch date nor any effort to bring the business-to-business distribution channel onside.
As revealed yesterday, the Intel-powered Pro slab - billed as an office PC replacement - will be rolled out in North …

COMMENTS

A real shame

One of these days...

Microsoft, like so many US companies, will learn that the whole release-it-later-everywhere-not-the-US approach just means less sales. People don't like to feel that they're buying what everyone else had (or at least what all their foreign friends have been blogging, chatting, txting, tweeting and talking about) months ago. We'll go off and buy an alternative make, if we bother at all.

It's the biggest mistake the TV/Movie industries made as well. Release things later and people will download it...then it'll be much harder to sell it to them when you eventually come around to giving a damn as to whether the product reaches them or not.

It is the price, stupid!

I don't get it. Even Microsoft cannot be that idiotic.

In the post PC, android/iOS tablet era, there is no space left for an overpriced windows 8 tablet. The only hope for Microsoft is if they manage to undercut the android competition on price - otherwise the windows 8 tablet will go the way of the windows 8 phone.....not very far.

Re: It is the price, stupid!

Many years ago.... I can't remember, if it was Windows 95 or 98... they included a BACK UP program that was supposed to enable you to back up all your data....

After a few "goes" at it, I committed in for a three whole days, and at the end, after finding that their compression / encryption ??? / backing up system - the program was found to be seriously defective, it too absolutley ages, and the "backed up files" were unable to be recovered, and the whole provcess was utterly fucking worthless.

It was more akin to shredding copies of ones documents, packing them in a big bin, and then pulling the shreds out and reassembling them.

I then jumped on the net., and found enormous amounts of other people, who also said the "Microsoft backing up software" - just did not fucking work.

It was then that I "miraculously" was able to do astounding back ups - by just copying the files from drive A to drive B...

This while Microsoft Surface has just been totally fucked up - and the more idiotic they become, the more idiotic they go, and the more idiotic the products they release are, and the more the fucked over customers go else where.

Well what other ourstanding acts of stupidity are they known for?

The Ribbon (which was really fucking dumb) with NO choce of using The Ri8bbbon, or a plain menu system....

All the dirty sleazy rigging of the ISO committees - to make Microsoft Docx an ISO standard.

Endless efforts to undermine competition, like Linux, and the "Free Software" community by dirty deals and scare tactics.

And putting their software full of surveilance back doors to monitor what consumers are doing, on their systems and on the net.

Then we have epic failures like Windows Millenium, and Vista and the endless cash cow upgrades

The Office Suites - essentially have had very few fundamental changes to them since 2003.

It's the same crap repackaged, the endless treadmill of Microsofts never ending upgrade cycle - and all the product produced with that software remains bound to that proprietry software.

Or so the people who run Microsoft try to make it.

Microsofts book of dirty tricks and nasty deals are never ending - especially against the open source community.

Now I am not saying that "The Surface" is technically, a bad piece of hardware, but the inclusion of the boot up system, that stops people installing other operating systems, and all the DRM consumer surveilance naziware that IS the Microsoft operating system......

Microsoft run programs in the background that report all of your activities.

Microsoft also like to play nasty with all of the OTHER operating systems, by refusing to read and write to disks in other formats.....

Linux in all of it's varieties, is saturating the market, on all of the mobile computing formats....

When the get dumped on the markets, at disposal prices, and the boot loading lock is cracked, I might buy one just to spite them, and install linux on it.

Speaking of shit......

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/windows_8_blame_game/

Badge of honour: Vista revisited

When new versions of Windows are released, Microsoft usually gives minimum hardware specs for the operating system to PC makers as part of its logo programmes: machines that meet the requirements get an official Redmond badge to reassure buyers. It should be stressed that these specifications are always pitched as the minimum needed to get the OS running.

One recent example is the notorious "Windows Vista Premium Ready" and "Windows Vista Premium Capable" badges. That programme landed Microsoft with a lawsuit as litigants claimed Microsoft misled them on what “capable” meant. It emerged Microsoft had played fast and loose with its own rules to help Intel, classifying PCs as capable when they weren’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The people who run Microsoft have been pulling the same scam for years before Vista.

I remember buying a premium "Microsoft Certified" laptop that had XP on it - and it took like 5 minutes to start up Word 2000...

It struggled with EVERYTHING, and the cashe (writing to and from the disk as a form of RAM) was always being thrashed flat out.....

Hammering the hard drive to death with the foot on the accelerator.

When I changed to Linux, that basically stopped.

I have just fucking hated Microsoft for dropping me in the shit, with their products and sleazy marketing practices, time, after time, after time.....

Re: I am going to University in sept this year.

Re: I am going to University in sept this year.

Whatever subject, hopefully the university won't turn out cretins whose idea of critical comment is 'a piece of shit'. OP, at least take solace in the fact that you are already smarter and better educated than many discover on this board!

Re: @The BigYin

Interesting site. Getting to your hardware spec for their 14" Ultranote, the best I could do was £760 inclusive. Dropping the Windows OS looks to be the only way to get below £700 for that hardware (pretty close to your £680 then).

However, the resolution is just 1366x768, which IMHO, is pretty poor for a 14" screen (especially considering that Surface Pro will be 1920x1080 at 10.6" [near "retina" PPI]!). 1920x1080 would just about be acceptable at that size.

Looked good...

.. until I saw the spec - if this is going to be an Enterprise PC replacement then 4GB isn't going to cut it. Reading the article and with (admittedly, not my own) money to spend I drifted off into a fantasy land of a managed wireless LAN where people were using a GPO controlled enterprise suite while happily downloading fart apps but if they have to page (even to an SSD) I'm not interested.

And they're doing over more confusion releasing Surface RT in other countries in February

While they will be releasing the Pro in US, they will also be releasing the RT in other European countries - this will add a lot of confusion if people read about the Pro specs (Full HD screen, 10 pint multitouch, digitizer, full windows application support) and then find the RT only in shops. If they believe Pro reviews will boos RT sales in the other countries they're wrong, it just risks to fool some customers in buying the wrong one. I may understood they need time for localizations - but Windows 8 is already localized - so what?

You're missing the obvious

It is aimed at the consumer market mainly to compete with products released by Apple and Google.

Admittedly it could do a great job in a business environment ... my guess is that a business product for this is in the works.

You also have to acknowledge that Microsoft is having to rebuild a 30 year old company in to something new at the same time ... Microsoft has a lot to live up to ... dominating markets has always been easy in the past but with the state of play at is it Microsoft now has to start proving it can compete when some other company releases the next big thing.

Apple pushed to people on to tablets ... the world ate it up ... so Microsoft follow to show they can do that too.

I just wish they would sort out their supply channels ... pretty crap that in the UK you still can't really get a surface RT several months after the official release.

Re: You're missing the obvious

"Windows 8 was never intended to be a corporate / business product."

Well done. I'm amazed so few have realised this.

MS knows the way its operating systems get taken on by the corps and enterprise. The schedule was set with most corps switching to NT4in 1999 for Y2K, XP by the mid 2000's and 7 for the past couple of years.

MS knows full well 8 isn't going to be a enterprise/corp OS so it's taken the move to bring out a more domestic consumer orientated one. They can do this as the corps will be still rolling out 7 for the next couple of years.

MS is now back on its new OS every 2-3 years schedule so it knows that corporate take up wont probably come around in any great numbers till Windows 10. In the meantime it's trying some new stuff on domestic consumers than the corporate ones. The next Windows could well be a further enhanced version of 8. 10 could well be quite different and more business style. A lot can happen in 7 years or so.

Any IT Manager/consultant that hasn't figured this out should really try and be a little more perceptive, or find a new job.

@Wardy01

"Windows 8 was never intended to be a corporate / business product."

I think you should contact Microsoft about this then because when I look at the Windows 8 product page it not only tells me that Windows 8 is "great for Work and Play", it also tells me that its a whole new era for PC's. And as an example they show a picture of what I assume to be a cashier who now holds a tablet instead of using a PC for her administration.

Another reason why I think Microsoft may not agree is because they even used the Windows 8 environment, including the whole metro kaboodle, and then embedded it into their new server 2012 line.

SO although I agree with your message, I also wouldn't let Win8 run amok in my business either, I think Microsoft really did intend for it to be used in that market as well.

Re: You're missing the obvious

My unsubstantiated gut feeling was that MS reckoned not everyone would bother with Win8 anyway, so they got a little experimental with Win8 and intend to use the user's feedback in the development of Win9.

The 'under the bonnet' features of Win8 aren't enough to make everyone move on from Win7- but maybe hardware will have changed /advanced enough by the time Win 9 is due for it to be worthwhile. By that time, enough real users will have formed their own views about touch-screens and touch-less input.

Re: You're missing the obvious - where to get 'em

> I just wish they would sort out their supply channels ... pretty crap that in the UK you still can't really get a surface RT several months after the official release.

Go into any John Lewis - they have loads. I think you will also be able to pick them up as returned items soon (20% off normal selling price) - the first Surface RT I got to see had been returned by someone ahead of me in the JL tech support queue.

Re: Re I always wanted a Zune

When the Zune came out, there weren't many HDD-based players to choose from... the iPod Classic, Cowon maybe, Archos were still being shabby about their codec support, iRiver had discontinued their H3xx series... I've only ever met one person who has owned one, though.

Re: Re I always wanted a Zune

Oh god, I bought one of those iRiver HD players from RIcher Sounds. I couldn't believe how noisy it was, could hear the hiss even when walking along a busy road.

In the end, I asked a colleague to put it on the test bench and look at the SNR, to see if I was just being precious. I really wasn't- it was hissier than a cheap FM radio.

I went steaming back to Richer Sounds with my bit of paper with scrawled test results, ready to talk about "fit for the purpose" as pertains to the Sale Of Goods Act. The shop assistant listened to my description of the fault and looked sad. He apologised, and asked if I preferred a refund or a replacement.

Hrm

The more time that passes, and the more details that emerge, the less that I am interested in this.

It isn't really a tablet as we currently understand them. It's going to have a lousy battery life, and fans (zomg), which makes it much more akin to the failed tablet PCs of old, even if the interface might be a little more touch-centric.

It's not really a good desktop replacement, the spec is more low-end ultrabook than anything- an i5, intel 4000 gfx and bugger-all RAM, and that's before you take the lousy secondary storage (64GB anyone?) into account. 64GB might be ok for iOS or Android, but not a full fat Windows 8 machine running Office, and all that other nasty cruft.

I don't know, maybe it's just me. I used to be tempted by this, but now I don't see a use case for it. It reminds me of the various tablet/slate things that Bill Gates used to push, only with slightly prettier industrial design. Less whelmed than I was.

Since Microsoft have yet to give a price and release date for the Surface pro they will probably just do the usual trick of taking of the $ sign off $899 and replacing it with a £ sign which means it will have limited amount of sales given the current economic climate.

Remember: it's another $130 for the keyboard and Office is not bundled so potential expense there (or the excuse to go LibreOffice;). To do real work you probably want a better keyboard anyway but still looking at a $1000+ US price ->£800, throw in another $100/£80 for a the 128Gb version.

Not cheap even if they don't screw you on the exchange rate. No-one will be buying this for normal tablet duties, severely limiting its market.